NEW YORK-The Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security (FSSCC) released its first annual report highlighting the progress made to ensure resiliency against criminal or terrorist attacks. The FSSCC is a group of financial trade associations and private firms working closely with Treasury, the financial regulators and other government agencies to coordinate private sector preparedness for events that could disrupt normal business function. CUNA and NAFCU are founding members of the FSSCC. "Over the past year, FSSCC has achieved an unparalleled level of coordination and action planning to safeguard our financial services infrastructure," Donald F. Donahue, Sector Coordinator and Chairman of the FSSCC, stated. "This report shows the outstanding progress the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council has made in protecting the critical infrastructure in 2004." Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Compliance Policy D. Scott Parsons commented. "The close cooperation between Treasury and the FSSCC exemplifies the public-private partnership that President Bush called for in his strategies to protect the nation's critical infrastructures." Listed among the accomplishments for 2004 were: *expanding coordination and sharing of `best practices;' *improving the resiliency of the telecommunications networks; *increasing membership in the Financial Services/Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS/ISAC), which provides assistance to financial firm in fighting cyber and physical threats, from 66 to nearly 1,000; *coordinating simulations for responses to particular events; *extensive business continuity testing; *completion of a sector-wide consolidated and coordinated crisis management call list; and *implementation of emergency centers and links to government crisis management structures. The FSSCC also provided reports on various subjects on its Web site (www.fsscc.org) ranging from phishing to improving telecommunications.